---
annotations_creators:
- no-annotation
language_creators:
- found
language:
- en
license: cc-by-4.0
multilinguality:
- monolingual
size_categories:
- n<1K
source_datasets:
- original
task_categories:
- tabular-classification
- tabular-regression
task_ids: []
tags:
- africa
- humanitarian
- hdx
- electric-sheep-africa
- asylum-seekers
- internally-displaced-persons-idp
- population
- refugees
- stateless-persons
- zaf
pretty_name: "South Africa - Data on forcibly displaced populations and stateless persons"
dataset_info:
  splits:
    - name: train
      num_examples: 658
    - name: test
      num_examples: 164
---

# South Africa - Data on forcibly displaced populations and stateless persons

**Publisher:** UNHCR - The UN Refugee Agency · **Source:** [HDX](https://data.humdata.org/dataset/unhcr-population-data-for-zaf) · **License:** `cc-by-igo` · **Updated:** 2026-02-25

---

## Abstract

Data collated by UNHCR, containing information about forcibly displaced populations and stateless persons, spanning across more than 70 years of statistical activities.  The data includes the countries / territories of asylum and origin.  Specific resources are available for end-year population totals, demographics, asylum applications, decisions, and solutions availed by refugees and IDPs (resettlement, naturalisation or returns).

Each row in this dataset represents first-level administrative unit observations. Data was last updated on HDX on 2026-02-25. Geographic scope: **ZAF**.

*Curated into ML-ready Parquet format by [Electric Sheep Africa](https://huggingface.co/electricsheepafrica).*

---

## Dataset Characteristics

| | |
|---|---|
| **Domain** | Demographics and population |
| **Unit of observation** | First-level administrative unit observations |
| **Rows (total)** | 823 |
| **Columns** | 14 (8 numeric, 6 categorical, 0 datetime) |
| **Train split** | 658 rows |
| **Test split** | 164 rows |
| **Geographic scope** | ZAF |
| **Publisher** | UNHCR - The UN Refugee Agency |
| **HDX last updated** | 2026-02-25 |

---

## Variables

**Geographic** — `year` (range 1966.0–2025.0), `country_of_origin_code` (ZAF), `country_of_asylum_code` (ZMB, GBR, USA), `country_of_origin_name` (South Africa), `country_of_asylum_name` (Zambia, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America) and 4 others.

**Identifier / Metadata** — `refugees` (range 0.0–11660.0), `esa_source` (HDX), `esa_processed` (2026-04-04).

**Other** — `other_people_in_need_of_international_protection` (range 0.0–0.0), `others_of_concern_to_unhcr` (range 0.0–7.0).

---

## Quick Start

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

ds    = load_dataset("electricsheepafrica/africa-unhcr-population-data-for-zaf")
train = ds["train"].to_pandas()
test  = ds["test"].to_pandas()

print(train.shape)
train.head()
```

---

## Schema

| Column | Type | Null % | Range / Sample Values |
|---|---|---|---|
| `year` | int64 | 0.0% | 1966.0 – 2025.0 (mean 2005.1458) |
| `country_of_origin_code` | object | 0.0% | ZAF |
| `country_of_asylum_code` | object | 0.0% | ZMB, GBR, USA |
| `country_of_origin_name` | object | 0.0% | South Africa |
| `country_of_asylum_name` | object | 0.0% | Zambia, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America |
| `refugees` | int64 | 0.0% | 0.0 – 11660.0 (mean 453.7339) |
| `asylum_seekers` | int64 | 0.0% | 0.0 – 2043.0 (mean 44.1495) |
| `other_people_in_need_of_international_protection` | int64 | 0.0% | 0.0 – 0.0 (mean 0.0) |
| `internally_displaced_persons` | int64 | 0.0% | 0.0 – 0.0 (mean 0.0) |
| `stateless_persons` | int64 | 0.0% | 0.0 – 0.0 (mean 0.0) |
| `others_of_concern_to_unhcr` | int64 | 0.0% | 0.0 – 7.0 (mean 0.0778) |
| `host_community` | int64 | 0.0% | 0.0 – 0.0 (mean 0.0) |
| `esa_source` | object | 0.0% | HDX |
| `esa_processed` | object | 0.0% | 2026-04-04 |

---

## Numeric Summary

| Column | Min | Max | Mean | Median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `year` | 1966.0 | 2025.0 | 2005.1458 | 2008.0 |
| `refugees` | 0.0 | 11660.0 | 453.7339 | 13.0 |
| `asylum_seekers` | 0.0 | 2043.0 | 44.1495 | 0.0 |
| `other_people_in_need_of_international_protection` | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| `internally_displaced_persons` | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| `stateless_persons` | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| `others_of_concern_to_unhcr` | 0.0 | 7.0 | 0.0778 | 0.0 |
| `host_community` | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |

---

## Curation

Raw data was downloaded from HDX via the CKAN API and converted to Parquet. Column names were lowercased and standardised to snake_case. Common missing-value markers (`N/A`, `null`, `none`, `-`, `unknown`, `no data`, `#N/A`) were unified to `NaN`. The dataset was split 80/20 into train and test partitions using a fixed random seed (42) and saved as Snappy-compressed Parquet.

---

## Limitations

- Data originates from UNHCR - The UN Refugee Agency and has not been independently validated by ESA.
- Automated cleaning cannot correct for misreported values, definitional inconsistencies, or sampling bias in the original collection.
- Refer to the [original HDX dataset page](https://data.humdata.org/dataset/unhcr-population-data-for-zaf) for the publisher's own methodology notes and caveats.

---

## Citation

```bibtex
@dataset{hdx_africa_unhcr_population_data_for_zaf,
  title     = {South Africa - Data on forcibly displaced populations and stateless persons},
  author    = {UNHCR - The UN Refugee Agency},
  year      = {2026},
  url       = {https://data.humdata.org/dataset/unhcr-population-data-for-zaf},
  note      = {Repackaged for machine learning by Electric Sheep Africa (https://huggingface.co/electricsheepafrica)}
}
```

---

*[Electric Sheep Africa](https://huggingface.co/electricsheepafrica) — Africa's ML dataset infrastructure. Lagos, Nigeria.*